The Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute held the 2014 installment of its annual conference at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law March 12-14. The 2014 conference, which saw a record number of registrations, was titled “Moving Beyond Recession: What’s Next?” and focused on the need to balance population and economic growth in the Mountain West with the environmental limitations of our region. In keeping with the conference’s theme, many conference participants followed the “Conservation in Metropolitan Regions” track of sessions, which focused on providing open space and environmental resources in the major population centers of the West. Attendees—who came from throughout the Rocky Mountain region and the United States—included urban planners; federal, state and local government officials; real estate developers; professors of planning, law and other disciplines; current students; and public- and private-sector land use and real estate lawyers. The Thursday morning keynote address was delivered by former Secretary of the Interior and former U.S. Senator Ken Salazar, who focused his remarks on the importance of sustainable growth and public outdoor recreational resources in the West.

Otten Johnson was a Summit sponsor of the conference, and many Otten Johnson lawyers featured prominently in the conference program. Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute Chairman and Otten Johnson shareholder Tom Ragonetti moderated the first-ever, daylong “Dynamics of the Land Use Case” seminar, an intensive training program on the fundamentals of the land use and real estate development process. As part of that seminar, Jim Johnson discussed how to assemble the right consulting team, and Tom Macdonald, Bill Kyriagis, and Brian Connolly spoke about various approaches for addressing an adverse land use decision. In the regular conference program, Tom Ragonetti facilitated a lunchtime discussion with a number of Denver-area residential developers discussing innovative approaches to homebuilding, Tom Macdonald shared his thoughts on the practical impacts of the 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management District, and Brian Connolly spoke on the topic of local government obligations under federal fair housing law and moderated a panel event on best practices for improving communication between the public and private sectors in the real estate development process.